If you’ve read the first part – Dealing with Disappointment, this part is all about how to really deal with it.
Get Over Yourself
The biggest obstacle to feeling pessimistic and hopeless may just be yourself. Life doesn’t always plan out the way you hoped it would. The quicker you shift the focus off yourself and onto the issue at hand, the better off you will be. Avoid indulging in a mental pity party! When you find yourself becoming pessimistic it’s time to give yourself a mental slap in the face, and if that still doesn’t motivate you, a quick boot up the backside for dessert.
Revise Your Plan
If the end result is disappointing it means that you need to revise your plan. Remember it is not the end of the world! Plan A can always turn into Plan B and be just as effective! Focus your energy into this new plan. Some of the greatest wars and battles in history were won by insightful generals and leaders who knew how to read the signs on the battlefield and so signaled a change of plan.
Look at the Big Picture
Avoid looking at your disappointment through a keyhole. Look at the complete picture and you will see that certain good things happened along the way. If you allow disappointment to over run you, the rest of the picture becomes less valuable than it really is. By focusing on the big picture you will discover that failures are rarely, if ever, 100% failures. If you break things down you might find that you were actually successful 95% of the time and so you need only focus on the remaining 5%. So all you need to do is solve that 5% to make it a 100% success.
Move Past It
You need to let go of disappointed feelings at some point. Stop obsessing about what went wrong. In the beginning it is important to become committed to an idea or decision but if things don’t work out as you’d expected you must learn to let it go and move past it. Inject some humor into the situation as that may help too. You can’t keep a good man, or woman, down – right? Learn from the past, be mindful of the present and look to the future, don’t worry, another idea will come and maybe this idea will be the big one.
Become Focused on Learning
Life will throw disappointments at you. They cannot always be prevented, so try to be more proactive about disappointment by analyzing its causes and applying the mental first aid before it really starts to sting. Ask yourself important questions like what the root cause of your disappointment is, whether or not you could have prevented the situation and what you can do differently next time to achieve better results.
Ask for Help
It is vital that you have friends and family in the best of times and the worst of times. When dealing with disappointment ask for help from a loved one or friend. As important as it is to work on one’s inner self, developing the outer resources is just as important. Being around people who care about you is a great stress reliever.
In summary, instead of being consumed by your disappointment focus on being grateful for what you have achieved in life so far. Look at some of the things you can be grateful for like having family and friends around you. Shifting your focus may help lift your spirits. And you may soon begin to feel how fortunate you are!
Well thats the end, We would love to hear from you, if you have any thoughts on the subject, or any great ways of dealing with Disappointment.
